Sunday, 6 April 2014

Memory Collectors (The Memory Collectors #1-3)

First of all, I need to address this: IDW, I am sure Netgalley offers the option of DRM protecting your files. This already happened with vol. 2 of X-Files Season 10, but at least the quality of the file was high enough that even with this on top of it:

Annoying though it may have been, you could still tell what was being said.

But this?!

Girl, I wishI could let my eyes relax!

You cannot lower the image quality and paste this atrocity on top. This pdf was only 88 pages long and my eyes are burning so much I'm considering taking a melon baller to the fucking things!

Look at this:

I'm pretty sure I could pass the final exam for a degree on cryptography after reading this volume.I am begging you, please find a better solution to protect your files!

But onto what really matters, the graphic novel itself.

Edith and Magdalena are fetish models - they do latex fashion shows in fetish clubs. When the story begins they're not exactly best friends - but one thing unites them: a creepy man in the club unsettles them both so much they decide to have him thrown out.

Creepy dude gone, they have a show to do. ...Except, walking on the catwalk, feeling more and more drained and insecure with each step taken, Edith sees the man they'd had thrown out. He didn't look the same, he wore a different face. But it was him.

Shaken, she agrees to walk to a hotel with all the other models. And then blank.Later she wakes up covered in blood, only she and Magdalena are alive, and the mysterious Beatrice who'd slaughtered their attacker - a Memory Collector: a soulless creature who fed on emotionally charged memories - offers to train them.

This is how Edith and Magdalena end up becoming hunters.

The artwork is, quite honestly, out of this world amazing.The actual Memory Collectors were something that belonged in an art gallery, seriously mind blowing. The whole atmosphere: light, colours. I don't even have the words to do justice to how absolutely perfect the artwork was. The Glamour Memory Collector was worthy of H. R. Giger, and the juxtaposition of the sexualised female form with graphic violence and the unsettling cycling from dreamy to nightmarish backgrounds, was reminiscent of Serpieri.

It was all so unbelievably gorgeous, I felt like most of it should be framed and on display. At times the narrative was at odds with the artwork, and it detracted a bit from the story. You'd have some unbelievably creepy things happening, and then some mundane remarks to go with it. For the story, Edith needed to be less simplistic, and some of the things she said just didn't ring true, they weren't a woman's voice. Mind you, more often than not it was on point.I would definitely recommend it for the artwork alone, but the story is also engaging, creepy, and incredibly original.